Bringing Death Home class at Lake Claire Community Land Trust

Yesterday was the Bringing Death Home class led by @narinder.bazen.death.life at the Lake Claire Community Land Trust.

Under the canopy of maple trees, people gathered on a sunny autumn afternoon to learn how the body dies. We came, so we could learn how to better serve and support our families, neighbors, and communities. We came so we could remember how to be more deeply in community with each other again, because when our hearts break and ache together, we learn to love together, too. Differences fall away, and we step into our shared humanity.

When we know how the body dies, we don't call 9-11 for normal symptoms of death. Loved ones who are about to step over the threshold are not yanked back, into the pain and trauma of a full-code, out of their homes and into the hospital where they didn't want to die.

When we know how the body dies, we can more holistically support our loved ones in transition.

We learned how to begin the journey of bereavement in a healthy, balanced way; how staying with our loved one's body for hours, or even a couple of days (you can do that, in Georgia) can help us integrate the shock of loss. And how home funerals can be a beautiful way to integrate the loss, too.

Some of these ideas - staying with your loved one's body, having a home funeral - make many in our culture uncomfortable (including me, before my training). But they are practices that were very, very common just until the 1930s. Until the newly-developed funeral industry advertised that they could "take the sadness out of your home."

...But what is the cost of that?

What do you think?